KOTA KINABALU: The Malaysian government should officially and immediately ask the Australian government to release their (Australian) full report on the Double Six air crash because the reason used by the Australian National Archives in withholding publication of the full report was that “Release of the information could reasonably be expected to cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth” (Australia).
In a statement former Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee said, another reason stated by the Australian National Archives is that “Malaysia has not as yet publicly released their final and full report of the investigation.”
The Australian National Archives titled the report as “Accident Malaysia Nomad Aircraft 9M-ATZ on 6 June 1976”.
“In two replies to my representative dated 14 March 2012, the Australian National Archives has stated that their “records contain technical detail” “which could impact on the Commonwealth’s (Australia’s) relations with the current government of a foreign country.”
In this case, that foreign country has to mean Malaysia and no other.
Reports must be published in full
According to him, further, both the Malaysian and Australian reports must be published in full. This is because the Australian National Archives had also disclosed that “certain parts of the text have been expunged” (that is, erased).
The replies from the Australian archives disclosed that a total of 110 folio are withheld from publication. Each folio contains more than one page.
According to him, only the release of the full reports, in both Malaysia and Australia, can bring closure to this extremely painful chapter of Sabah’s history.-pr/BNN
